Here's a question that new users of antiX might like some clarification on;

What does anyone imagine the life of Spartacus will be after the introduction of the new antiX? Will it continue to exist with a separate identity from the new version? Will there be a community of antiX users who for some reason can't, or won't, move to the new version?

Will it be possible for Spartacus to be"maintained" the way some versions of Mepis have survived among users faithful to, say, 3.4.3? Will it be possible to obtain Spartacus in the future (and have repos) if users find Spartacus a better match for their hardware for some reason?

Just wonderin'--this being anticapitalista's one-man show and all...

Well, that's based on Dapper which has long time support, I think there are still 3 years left (if I'm not wrong) so anybody who wants to use it will be able to get security patches. As for new programs, foggetaboutit.

Adrian is correct.
This is to main reason why Warren moved from Ubuntu. The problem with upgrading Dapper to Fiesty of Gutsy is not consistent, unlike with Debian.

Upgrading apps MIGHT work if you change the repos from Dapper to Edgy or Fiesty. You will have to be very careful about what gets installed and/or removed. If you don't have kde, your chances of success are higher.

I'm not sure about this, but did Warren provide a cd/dvd of extra apps for Mepis 6.5? If there is one available, then this is probably the best way to add new apps. But there will still be a problem with upgrading though.

About the repos, well they are in Warren's hands. I presume they will be available for a while, not sure for how long.

The line is Tony Curtis's. You know, from the movie...

Thanks for the info. I've come to really like Spartacus because I've spent a lot of time setting it up just the way I like it, and everything has worked without a hitch. *If* something goes wacky for me with the new version, it's nice to know I can fall back on Spartacus, even though new apps won't be in the picture. That's okay. Until a month ago, I'd been using MepisLite!

I have created an up-to-date Spartacus through the Ubuntu fiesty repos. It is very alpha at the moment, it uses the original Spartacus kernel ie 2.6.15 which means those with k5/k6 can use it.
At the moment there are problems with alsa and udev error messages (due to the Mepis scripts not getting upgraded).
Also internet connection did not work out of the box, but it did (as livecd) when configured in mnetwork.
Apps appear to work as normal, boot is fast and response with 128MB RAM snappy.
I'll mess around with it a bit more and then make it available for testing. I would prefer antiX-M7 to be able to boot k5/k6 with a 586 kernel, but I can't seem to get it to work in antiX-M7.

anticapitalista wrote:I have created an up-to-date Spartacus through the Ubuntu fiesty repos.

Does this mean Spartacus and antiX-M7 will be, to some degree, parallel and continuing developments? or just until the kernel glitch in M7 gets worked out? Either way, your consideration for the k5/k6 folks is much appreciated.

If I can get Spartacus to work properly with the fiesty repos, then it will be released for users even if I get the kernel sorted out for antiX-M7, but it will be the last one using Ubuntu repos.

I have tried both current versions of Antix rather a lot and I find that the M7 version is harder and longer to set up and breaks more easily. I have a hard drive running Ubuntu 7.04 and have not really been a big fan of any Ubuntu release since then as it's now becoming bloatware, but I do have much better stability and performance with old Ubuntu than any Debian based systems.

I really believe that there are people who would much prefer a newer Ubuntu-based Antix. I know Spartacus was Dapper based but could there be a more up to date Ubuntu based version, possibly with XFCE? Some of us out here don't like bloatware and are happy to start with a minimal install and build it to suit our tastes and needs.

There are some posts in this forum and in the antix forum at
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.mepislovers.com"
linktext was:"www.mepislovers.com"
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regarding the installation of xfce on antix.

I don't think that you will see an ubuntu-based antix. This is because antix is based on mepis. So the only way antix would be based on ubuntu is if mepis is based on ubuntu.

There still may be a way to update to the latest version of ubuntu, but it's not easy. Check the ubuntu forums for updating from older versions to newer versions without reinstalling.

john

Of course there is already the option of using XFCE with Ubuntu, it is Xubuntu. I have used this successfully in the past with older hardware.